Ex Paginis Poetae
by Victorian Taxi
Summary: Unconnected scenes based on the poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus.
1. A Lament for a Brother

**The poem is Catullus's Carmen CI--it is written out in full at the bottom. A literal translation (by me) follows.**

**Disclaimer: All things Sherlockian belong to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The poem belongs to Gaius Valerius Catullus.**

* * *

_Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus_  
_advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias  
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis_

He'd travelled from London to Newhaven, across the Channel, through France and Belgium, all the way to Switzerland—good Lord, he'd been to Switzerland—and now, Dr. John H. Watson, M.D., had returned to London to stand in this lonely, mournful graveyard in the unseasonably chill mist of a May afternoon. With supreme effort, he forced himself to ignore the pain in his old war wound, focusing instead upon the pastor's intoning the words of the funeral service. Never mind the damp, no matter how much it caused his bones to twinge. It was the least he could, and the last he could do, for Sherlock Holmes. At last came the final "amen," and the crowd of mourners began to dissipate as the empty casket was lowered into the ground, whispering their equally empty condolences to the veteran as one by one they passed his statue-like form. Soon, only the doctor remained at the graveside.

_  
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem._

"I'm sorry, Holmes," he whispered, trying to somehow alleviate the burden upon his soul—the sorrow, the anger, but most of all, the guilt, the gnawing, irrational guilt which insisted this was all somehow his fault. His fault for leaving Holmes, perhaps, but even more so his fault for some inexplicable reason not even he could ever claim to comprehend. "I'm so very sorry."

But even as he spoke, he knew the words meant nothing. His friend could not respond, and no measure of grief could undo the past.

_Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.  
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi!_

It wasn't fair, the doctor reflected, any of it. That he who had chronicled so much of Holmes' life should have been absent at his death. That his gallant desire to save a life should have instead brought about the end to one. That Holmes, always so cold and reserved, should have been the one to have a chance to say good-bye. Tears stung at the back of Watson's eyes, and he had no desire to stop them.

_  
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum  
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,_

And so this was left: to stand beside an empty grave. Watson tried to convince himself it was for Holmes. He knew it wasn't true. He couldn't even claim "Bury the dead," for Holmes' bones, it appeared, were lost forever.

No, this was for the living. Some tried to believe it brought about "closure." Such a thought made the doctor scoff: what kind of closure was left that death itself had not brought already? Rather, the burial was carried out, Watson was sure, simply to maintain tradition—to follow the precepts of their fathers, and their fathers' fathers, and all the ancient men before them. An Englishman received an English burial; whether it meant anything to the dead was immaterial.

_accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,_

Tears were flowing down the doctor's face in earnest now, tracing paths upon his cheeks before trickling off his chin and onto the ground, each one bringing with it a piece of his shattered soul. Watson still had no will to dry them. Instead, he continued to stand at the graveside, still but for his trembling shoulders, as he wept until the tears would come no more.

_  
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale._

"Good-bye, old fellow," he whispered at last. And slowly, he turned around and walked away.

_Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus_  
_advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias  
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis_

_et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem._

_Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.  
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi!_

_Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum  
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,_

_accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,_

_atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale._

_-_

_Having been carried through many lands and over many seas, _

_I come, brother, toward these sad funerary rites_

_That I might present you with the final gift of death_

_And uselessly address the silent ashes._

_Because fortune stole you yourself from me,_

_Alas, unfortunate brother unfairly having been snatched away from me!_

_Now, meanwhile, nevertheless, accept these things_

_Which have been handed down in the ancient custom of our fathers_

_In a sad gift toward the funerary rites,_

_Very wet with brotherly tears,_

_And, into eternity, brother, hello and yet good-bye._


	2. Leaving Bithynia

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed...that was really exciting! **

**The poem here is Catullus's Carmen XLVI. It is, again, written out in full at the bottom, followed by a literal translation (by me).**

**Disclaimer: All things Sherlockian belong to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The poetry belongs to Gaius Valerius Catullus.**

* * *

_Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,  
__iam caeli furor aequinoctialis  
__iucundis Zephyri silescit aureis._

It was spring again. He could recognize it before seeing all those usual signs the poets so praise—the flowers, the return of the birds, and so forth. Perhaps it was a smell in the air; perhaps, in his more fanciful moments (of which there were many more these days than he would readily admit), he could almost believe to feel a subtle warmth in even the most chill breeze of the lingering winter, as if the vernal wind had come to herald the advent of the season of renewal. Or perhaps it was the dead weight which settled upon his soul, reminding him that it had been yet another year since last he set foot on his native land.

_Linquantur Phrygii, Catulle, campi  
__Nicaeaeque ager uber aestuosae:  
__ad claras Asiae volemus urbes._

But no longer. No more was he exiled to the emptiness that was the Arabian deserts, to the soul-piercing bleakness he had found in the mountains of Tibet, or to the harsh jaggedness of Persian highlands, which all the beauty of the backcountry could not mask. No longer need he journey for days without seeing another living soul—or, when he was in the presence of his fellow men, find them greatly outnumbered by the cattle or other beasts they raised. How strange that he, who so often scorned company or conversation, could find himself in those periods of solitude yearning for just one glimpse, however ever brief, of another human face! He need never again wander through cities whose names he could not pronounce, checking every man's features, the gait of each passer-by's walk, outwardly calm but inwardly frantic, fearful, knowing that, no matter how far or long he roamed, he still may be followed, that, should he grow careless, each step, each sight, might be his last. No more must he sit at a task once beloved, but now hated through its compulsion, nor spend his few free hours on a foreign shore, gazing with an emptiness he did not think himself capable of feeling toward a distant horizon where sky met a sea that did not lead home.

_Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,  
__iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt._

It was upon that shore which he now stood once again, eyes set not upon the faraway waves licking the edge of the heavens, but upon the rather closer sheet of paper clenched in his trembling hand as he read for an unnumbered time the words which declared the end to his exile. And with a slight jolt (so unlike his usual detachment!) he noticed that his hand did indeed quiver, that his breath caught in his throat, that his pulse pounded around his temples. For a moment he paused, his guard up, recognizing the ever-present symptoms of fear. Yet in that moment, he perceived that, though his hand shook, it was neither with the tightness of panic nor the lassitude of dread; that though his breath stuck, it did not suffocate; that his heart hammered not with the animalistic instinct for survival, but with that most human of assertions "I am alive!" This was not fear, he understood, but that more familiar, more welcome of emotions which he had come to believe these many months that he might never feel again—that of energy, of excitement.

_O dulces comitum valete coetus,  
__longe quos simul a domo profectos  
__diversae varie viae reportant._

For it was time to leave behind Sigerson, Willems, Fournier, and all the other, countless names—none of them his own—to which he had answered these three long years. It was time to again tread down roads he need not even see to number the very paving stones upon which he stepped. It was time to once more walk through an oily, yellow fog so dense that, were his eyes alone to be trusted, nothing seemed to exist beyond its swirling drops, and to revel in its very damp, not because it was a fog, but because it rose from the Thames. It was time to look again into a mirror and see not the countenance of a stranger gazing back, but his own face—the face of Sherlock Holmes.

It was time to go home.

* * *

_Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,  
__iam caeli furor aequinoctialis  
__iucundis Zephyri silescit aureis.  
__Linquantur Phrygii, Catulle, campi  
__Nicaeaeque ager uber aestuosae  
__ad claras Asiae volemus urbes.  
__Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,  
__iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt.  
__O dulces comitum valete coetus,  
__longe quos simul a domo profectos  
__diversae varie viae reportant._

_Now spring brings mild gentle warmth,  
__Now the anger of the equinoctial sky  
__Grows calm in the pleasant winds of Zephyr.  
__Catullus, let the Phrygian plains  
__And the fruitful field of glowing Nicaea be released:  
__Let us fly toward the bright cities of Asia.  
__Now the impatient mind longs to wander,  
__Now the glad feet become lively in desire.  
__Good-bye, o sweet assembly of companions,  
__Those whom, having set out from home together,  
__Distantly, in different ways, different roads carry back. _


End file.
